With Apple’s Tablet announcment just 1 week away, Amazon today announced a change to its royalty program for authors on the Kindle platform, presumably in an effort to combat what it sees as a threat from Apple’s latest, and yet still un-announced product.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve heard rumblings that Apple is looking to get into e-publishing, and that it would offer publishers the same 70/30 split it currently offers iPhone developers. Amazon, in contrast, keeps the bulk of the proceeds from every digital sale, or at least they used to. According to a press release from Amazon, the new 70% royalty rate will go into effect on June 30, 2010.

There are some requirements, though, to be eligible for the 70% royalty rate.

The author or publisher-supplied list price must be between $2.99 and $9.99

This list price must be at least 20 percent below the lowest physical list price for the physical book

The title is made available for sale in all geographies for which the author or publisher has rights

The title will be included in a broad set of features in the Kindle Store, such as text-to-speech. This list of features will grow over time as Amazon continues to add more functionality to Kindle and the Kindle Store.

Under this royalty option, books must be offered at or below price parity with competition, including physical book prices. Amazon will provide tools to automate that process, and the 70 percent royalty will be calculated off the sales price.